


Lungs and legs

by curious_skylark



Category: Den lille Havfrue | The Little Mermaid - Hans Christian Andersen, Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, The Little Mermaid - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Hans Christian Andersen is kind of the villain, Happy Ending, Little Mermaid Elements, Original Retelling, eventual LGBTQ themes, mermaid, sort of contemplative but I promise things happen eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:34:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22204171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curious_skylark/pseuds/curious_skylark
Summary: An alternate ending to the Andersen tale, where the mermaid survives and struggles with the aftermath of being stranded on dry land.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

There is one thing worse than a sea-witch in this world and that is a man with a little notebook. I should know, I have met both.  
A witch once offered me a deal: a changed body for a lost voice. But when a man with a little notebook took my life from my hands and wrote it down he offered me nothing in return. He did not ask permission, nor did he make deals. He took my story, as though he found it on the side of the road, and that is how I know: nothing is sacred and nothing is safe from a man with a little notebook.

And since I have met him, you know where this story begins: where they tell you it should have ended, on a moon-lit night on the Northern sea. Under a cloudless sky, a royal ship rocks gently on the waves. Under the deck, in his royal bed, a prince is asleep with his newly-wed princess.  
The crew is asleep too, after a night of celebration.  
The witch is gone now, the sea has closed above her without a trace. I am alone and for a moment I could nearly believe that she was never here. But there is a knife in my hand and no time for wishful thinking.  
The deck is wet and slippery – a strange and unpleasant sensation that rises from the feet and overwhelms me for a moment. If the man with a little notebook got to you first, you know that this is where I have to make a choice. I loved a man, and failed to make him love me, and now my options are murder or nothingness.  
I look at the stairs leading down, below deck. I imagine myself descending, walking: the corridor, the door, the bed... In my mind, I stop there, I cannot make a step. I do not want to see them. I cannot face it. I cannot make it fact. As long as I am here, with the moon shivering in the water, the wet air in my lungs (it still surprises me how they fill up, as though they are going to explode) the impossible situation is just in my mind. It cannot be, so it is not. 

I feel panic raising in me. There has got to be something to do, a way out, a way around. I have got to get away from all this, somehow.  
I turn around, turn towards where the dark line of the horizon signals the forest, the far-off land. It cannot be that far. There are still a few hours left before sunrise. I only contemplate the waves for a moment before climbing the railings. I know my way – part of me remembers. I take a big gulp of air, hold it in the newly-found lungs, and jump.

Swimming is now harder than I could have ever imagined. It is violent, and counter-intuitive, and unnatural. The legs have to kick, I have to fight my way through, push against the waves. This body cannot trust the water and it struggles to find its way across it. Every second, I have to suppress the reflex of giving in. I go down, and gasp for air, and grasp for the surface. At times, I do not believe I am going to make it. And even if I do, will I make it in time? And even then, will it matter? The fear makes me lose my breath again – I cannot afford it. I will get as far as I can. It is the best I can do.  
The nightgown is not helping. I should have taken it off, but now it is too late for that, now all that matters is beating the water with my hands, kicking myself away from the depth, pushing and pulling against the tide and across the distance. 

At some point one foot hits something, then the other one, then I am on my knees in water and in sand. And then I am walking, trying to run, stumbling towards the beach and the line of trees behind it.  
I walk until there is only dry sand underneath the feet and stop. I do not yet dare look back, only up. The moon is still there, too bright to let the stars show their faces. The night is not quite over yet and I have to keep going, as far as possible, as far into the land as I can. I have no idea if this is going to save me, but every power must have boundaries, I figure. When we change worlds, the rules change too. No contract can be binding everywhere. And so I must run.

The legs hurt from all the kicking, but I force them to move as fast as possible. The sand seems to cling to me, slowing me down, but after a while there is less of it, more grass, and trees on both sides of me. I am not sure which direction I am running in, nor where this will lead me, but the exhaustion is helping me not to think. All I can do now is force this body to move forward. There is less light now, the moon is hidden by leafs, so I make my way blindly, away, in a straight line, feet hitting things on the ground, branches striking my face.  
I do no know how long I have run. Minutes, hours, I have no idea. I am beyond caring, beyond fear or worry, when I notice the patches of sky brighten. The day is breaking. I fall on my knees, breathing heavily, and wait.  
And when the day comes and brings nothing but thin, timid rays of light, I cry. And then I fall asleep. 

I wake up slowly, not knowing where I am. I feel the grass under my hands, expecting it to flow around me. As I rise towards consciousness, for a moment I forget to breathe and I awake choking. I am still in the forest and it must be past noon. The light is moving, green and gold patches, and at first I think it is the waves shifting softly across the sand. But it is the trees, I realize: I am lying on a bed of moss and grass, under a canopy of leafs shivering and filtering the sun. 

I rise slowly and look around me. And then I look at me – the two feet on the ground, what I can see of the legs, the knees bruised. Suddenly, I feel the pain – the swimming and running has not been without cost and now every muscle is screaming vengeance. My body is exhausted and aching, but I am alive. The relief hits me, a tide lifting everything up in its wake. I am still here. Whole. Breathing.  
And now the body is overcome with joy. It is jumping in triumph. It is taking deep breaths and laughing from the bottom of its lungs. The grass feels soft as it runs and skips and dances and falls again of the ground.

I lay there some more as it all sinks in. The joy subsides as thoughts settle in. I notice that my laughing made no sound and understand that my voice is still gone. I am puzzled by the reasons of my salvation and uncertain of my future survival. Then there is the question of where – where I am and where I will go.

I sit up again and try to assess the situation. I seem to be deep into the woods, with no road or human settlement in sight. The nightgown I am wearing has dried by now, but it is all I have got with me and it seems in bad shape. I am starting to get hungry and before long the forest might not be the most hospitable of places. I have heard there were wild animals and despite my curiosity this worries me a bit. I should probably move, look for a better place for the night, maybe find some food, although I have no idea what it would look like in the middle of a forest.

That is when the thought occurs to me first: What happens if I get nearer to the shore? Does my deal with the witch abide? I cannot take that risk. Not if I want to stay alive. I have to keep moving away. I remember the sunset behind the trees at the far horizon when I stood on the deck of the ship and decide I can get away by following the evening sun.  
I wait a while to be certain the sun had indeed crossed zenith, then set out in its direction. I walk slowly now, the legs still hurting. The forest is nothing like the woods I had a chance to see so far on dry land. I can feel it stretches a long way and covers more ground than I can imagine. It is a little like the sea in this way and that though feels strangely reassuring for a moment.

It is only once that moment passes that another realization hits me. Not gradually, one thought at a time. It does not even bother with thoughts, it just strikes, blindly, punching the air out of me, grabbing my chest and squeezing. I keep walking, only for fear that if I stop now I will not find the strength to move again. I force the air in: small, regular breaths. But the pain does not go away, it just settles in and spreads. It is all gone – the sea is gone for me, the gentle rocking of it, and the wild roaring of the storms, the sounds, the salt on my lips, the sensation of being held and being whole – all gone. I am now truly banished, damned if I ever return. I wonder if dissolving would not have been easier. And perhaps more deserved.

I struggle to fight the image as it rises in my mind, the two of them sleeping as I would have found them, peaceful and entangled until I would have cut them from each other, cut them away from us all. Just imagining it feels like invading, like trespassing. This was to be the price for my survival and I still feel shaken by the thought.

And yet, despite it all, something in this body – which is only half mine, which I hardly recognize – keeps pushing itself on. Past the contracted lungs, the heavy feet, the scream rising at the back of the throat only to rest there, making me choke. Away from home, away from the wreckage, it keeps going. Moving calms me, rocks me, grounds me. As long as I am walking, I can carry the pain and keep it within me. As long as I can concentrate on my steps, as long as I do not stop to contemplate it, I can put the hurt to sleep. So I push it all into the back of my mind and focus on the task at hand. And that task is becoming pressing – my stomach is gargling now.

The terrain to my left ascends in a slight slope and I decide to head in that direction, in hopes of getting a vantage point. After a moment I seem to see the top of the hill, so I start walking faster, but the ground is still rising and I am out of breath. I am starting to worry I have wasted my strength in vain when the forest finally becomes less dense. Soon I notice a clearing near a hilltop from where a view spreads on the green mass around me.

When I first see it, I do not know what it is: a patch of cottony grayness above the trees, spiraling its way towards the sky. It takes me a while to associate that image with something I have already seen, during my brief stay in the prince’s castle: early mornings in the courtyard when the smoke started coming out from the myriad of chimneys. I set out in that direction, but the road there turns out longer than I would have thought.

The night falls, slowly at first, then all at once, darkness spreading from the shadows of the trees and engulfing the world. I must slow down if I am to avoid falling down again. I would be afraid, if it was not for the numbness that has slowly overcome me. The fear is just strong enough to drive me forward, to prevent me from stopping and resting before finding shelter. Step after step I advance. Minute by minute, the night passes. 

The sky is verging on gray again when I see the first house in the distance. Pale green, brown, and gray, the village emerges from among the trees. I walk past a frail wooden fence and towards a shed. This is where I come eye to eye with a small child. He looks at me for a moment, wide-eyed, then turns around and runs towards the nearest house screaming.  
“Berta! Berta! There is a lady behind your shed!”.  
A plump older woman comes around the corner and stares at me in turn. I return the stare, then the exhaustion takes over and I am only half-aware that I am collapsing at her feet.


	2. Chapter 2

The next time I open my eyes I am in a room, clear wood and white sheets around me. I stay awake only long enough to make sure I am safe, before the darkness swallows me again.  
The second time the face of a woman occupies all my view. Her cheeks are wide and reddish. Her eyes are small and green and seem a little stern, but her voice is kind when she asks “Are you awake?”. I nod and attempt to smile, for lack of better means of thanking her. I realize she must have taken care of me for quite a while. “How do you feel?” she asks and I hope a smile will be enough of an answer this time as well. It is not. “What’s wrong with you?” she insists. “Can’t you speak?”. I shake my head vigorously and for a moment she looks impatient, then taken aback. “You can’t speak?” she asks again, slower now. I nod. “But you understand me?”. I nod again. She looks at me for a long while in silence. “I’m Berta” she says eventually. “I don’t know what happened to you, but you’ve been mostly sleeping for the last three days. Can you stand now?”. I try, and realize I cannot. The knees give in as soon as I am upright and I fall on the bed. There is once more both an impatience and a kindness in Berta’s little, sharp eyes. “You’ll stay here then” she declares. “Rest now”. And with this she leaves the room. 

***

It has been nearly a month. It has taken me a full week to be able to walk steadily again, but that does not mean I can move freely about. The pain in my limbs no longer stops me, and neither does the woman who has nursed me back to health, but crossing the village soon turned out to be a challenge. The looks themselves would have been enough: it feels as if they are weighting me to the ground, eyes on every corner following me around. But it does not stop there. There are the whispers, the muffled conversations and the not too muffled comments. There are whistles and calls. Once, a group of young boys followed me around, and when I tried to get away one of them grabbed my arm. I run, and decided from then on that the inside of Berta’s house was a better place for me.  
The twilight of the room where I fist awoke started to feel comforting after a while. The shapes of the furniture grew familiar and my eyes grew unaccustomed to the bright light of the outside.  
But those last few days I have found myself remembering the first day after my escape, the moment when I opened my eyes as sunlight filled the forest. I recall more and more how the all-encompassing, moving green of the trees reminded me of home. I miss the colors, the way they shift constantly. I miss the sensation of the elements on my skin – water, air, at this point I could not care less. So today I decided to attempt a walk in the forest.  
If I am lucky, I can be out of the village soon enough, without having to endure much of the usual attention. 

I nearly make it. I can already see where the neat, fenced off space of the village gives way to the unruly woods. I walk straight, head up and eyes firmly fixed on the path ahead of me, pretending not to notice the reactions. And then, right when I am planning to turn and leave the path and find refuge under the extended fingers of leafs, I spot a group of men gathered around a table. They are between me and the line of woods. Two of them are engaged in a contest – arm-wrestling, I think it is called, a game where you try to bring your opponent's wrist to the table to prove your strength. There are screams and cheers coming from the group. One of the men seems to have won and the loser is replaced by another contestant.  
I slow down, hoping they will not notice me, but of course they do. One of them points at me saying “And where is this one going?” and soon enough there is a chorus of jokes and laughs. I try to ignore it, but the man who was winning the game raises and comes towards me.  
He is right in my path and the instinct to turn back and run is overwhelming. Why do humans constantly seek confrontation? This is not how things work under the sea. You can fight the current, but if you do, eventually you will lose. You need to learn to harness it, add its strength to your own. If you resist the waves, sooner or later you will get hurdled against the rocks. But there are no waves here, I tell myself, no current to follow in the world of sharp objects. Perhaps to survive on dry land you have to be the rocks, I think and keep walking. I force myself to look at the man as, step after step, he comes closer. I only stop when I can no longer advance without walking into him. His face – pink, and hairy, and laughing – now looms above me, so close I could touch it. With signs, I try to tell him I only want to get to the forest. He seems amused by this. “Come to join the game?” he asks. Again, I point to the trees behind him. “Oh, that’s where you want to go!” he says, as though that was the funniest thing in the world, and the others greet this with another wave of giggles. “Tell you what,” the man says, “you beat me, and I’ll let you pass!”. He extends his hand, as though to wrest.  
This appears to be a joke, although I do not quite understand why. Does he think I will make an interesting opponent? But why would that be amusing? These legs might still be weak, but my arms are what they have always been – made for swimming. I wonder if the man simply didn’t notice them under this dress? I have always been strong, even among my people. I have swam for days on end, crossed mighty currents, dived into the deepest crevasses and rose all the way to the surface. I have survived tempests that would have swallowed him whole. I wonder if the joke is that he does not stand a chance?  
He is still in my path and there is simply no getting past him. All I want right now is to disappear among the trees. I want out of here and I do not see any other way, so I nod.  
For a second, he looks thoroughly confused, as if he never expected me to accept, but it does not last. He grabs me by the elbow and leads me towards the table. There is still laughter all around, an ugly, wet noise coming from low in the men’s throats. I am pushed into a chair and the large man sits opposite me, grinning. His hand is huge and warm to the touch, the skin of his palm rough and dry. My fingers seem tiny squeezed between his, but when the push comes I am ready for it and my hand hardly moves. For a moment his face is one of genuine shock and before he recovers I push hard and his wrist hits the table with a thump.  
To my surprise this results in neither cheers, nor laughter. There is a long second of absolute silence, before one of the spectators exclaims “Look at Ian! Cheating all this time!”. Now the cheerful cries come back, but they sound uncertain. I look up at the man in front of me. There is anger in his eyes, but it only lasts a moment. Then he seems to have reached some sort of a decision and his wide face erupts again in a smile. “Ah, she’s tough, this one!” he declares, “Took me by surprise!”. He extends his hand again and I know I would be wise to lose this time, but this body seems to come with a mind of its own and that mind appears to be guided by a fair amount of pride.  
It takes three more tries for Ian to give up and let his companions have a try. By now, they have all passed through a similar progression: they hovered on the verge of anger for a while, but ruled in favor of amusement. More bystanders have gathered too. Children are urging me on with their squeals, elderly men shake their heads as I push down wrist after wrist, young women stand on tiptoe to see above the heads of those already gathered. It feels like the whole village is excitedly observing the spectacle of the mute girl arm-wrestling.  
Four more men have tried and failed to beat me now. To my surprise, as the fifth one sits opposite me, I feel the corners of my mouth rising. There is a joy in using one’s strength and it has been too long since I felt it.  
Around that time a cry emerges from the surrounding noise: “Give the woman some beer!”. Soon there is a massive glass in front of me brimming with golden liquid. The first sip tastes foul, bitter and heavy on the tongue, but this feels like a test, so I keep drinking.  
Something strange happens after some more sips. The sharp edges of dry land seem to blur. The sensation resembles that of home. Objects lose their clarity, contours start to move as though seen through water. I like it. I did not even realize how tired I was of those clear-cut shapes. There is a trembling inside me, a sort of excitement that makes everything around me move faster. I am not sure how many more hands I press in mine and how many more glasses are put in front of me. But I want the world to keep shifting and floating, so I force the cold, disgusting drink down my throat. I can see I’m not the only one whose world is blurred this, because the cries are louder and everyone seems to move quicker. At some point, after another win, Ian picks me up from my chair, lifts me up high in the air and places me on the table. I am not quite sure why.  
It is from this vantage point that I see Berta approaching, fast steps, arms crossed.  
“What on God’s green Earth is going on here?” her voice cuts through the chatter. “What have you done to that poor child? You get down here and back home right now!”.  
Walking turns out to be a challenge. When we do get home Berta leads me to my room and my body falls on the bed, the dizziness takes over, and I feel as if the waves were greeting me back and closing over my head.

I awake the next morning to a thumping in my skull. There seems to be a nail drawn through each of my temples. Uncertainly, I make my way to the kitchen. Berta wordlessly places a glass of milk and some bread on the table and watches me slowly force it down. When I finish, she rises and hands me the bucket used to carry water from the well.  
“If you’re strong enough to drink, you’re strong enough to work” she declares.  
It is easier said than done. The nails in my temples are still there and the legs feel limp, as though they could not quite carry my weight. As I drag the full bucket back towards home Ian’s massive silhouette appears before me.  
“I see she’s put you to work, little arms” he says reaching out for the bucket. I grab the handle firmly and move away. “Whoa, slow there!” he exclaims “You're white like death herself! Must be a mighty hangover you’ve got! You’re in no state to fight me today”. I am not sure what a hangover is, but I am feeling quite awful, so I let him take the bucket from my hands and carry it all the way to Berta’s house.


	3. Chapter 3

It is autumn now. In early mornings we find the water in pots and basins frozen over. The trees are golden and the air is white, clear and cool like drinking from a well.  
I do not quite know how, but that day of arm-wrestling changed things. There are still curious looks when I walk through the village, but no smirks or comments when I pass. My days become filled with chores and as I go about my work, I meet people. Slowly, we get used to each other’s presence. Berta seems happy to have me around, although she would probably never say so aloud. Ian has gotten into the habit of calling me Little Arms and I have come to greet this with a smile.  
Everything seems to have fallen into place. Time in the village flows with a regular rhythm. The gestures of dawn subtly bring us into movement, the work of the day carries us into the quiet evenings, and the evening imperceptibly turn into nights.   
Only the mornings are hard, when I awake from a night spent back in the soft, ever-flowing embrace of home.   
I have been learning things. I have learned to weave and sew and darn. I know how to make a fire in the fireplace and always remember to keep it alive, even though the flames still scare me a little. I have learned to cook, and to bake, and to make bread – round, heavy loafs which fill the air with their smell at daybreak.  
I have learned that I can walk all the way to where the forest gives way to the hills before getting tired, and to the other side of the hills before the pain in the legs calls me back. How I have run and dragged myself the whole distance from the sea when I came here, I cannot quite imagine.

I have also learned that this body bleeds. The first time this happened was a little over a month into my stay here. I would have screamed if I had a voice. Berta found me in the morning, fingers in my mouth, staring at the flowering of dark spots on the bed.  
“God bless you child!” she exclaimed. “How old even are you?!”. And then, when I seemed no more reassured, more softly she asked “Did no one explain this to you?”. I shook my head vigorously, so she did. She sat me down and told me all sorts of confusing things about this body that I have come to live in. For days after that, whenever I was alone, I would look down in disbelief. Berta said there could be a tiny human in my belly, which seemed like such a wild idea. She also said I had to get married for that to happen, although from what she said I could not really work out how wearing a dress to church fits into all this.  
Still, perhaps that is what Ian has in mind. From time to time, he puts he’s arm around me and says “Well, Little Arms, wanna be my wife?”. It always sounds like a joke, but some times I look up at him and see his face is dead serious.  
At first, I would not had considered it, not even a minute. Ian resembles one of those wooden logs he spends his days cutting. He is massive, square in the shoulders, round in the belly. Even his skin is a little like wood, rough and unequal. There is hair all over his face too, curly, reddish-brown, and a little scary.   
Once, when Berta heard Ian talk like that, she later asked what I thought of it. I shook my head and when she asked why I showed her it was all the hair and made faces until she could not stop laughing.   
After a while though, I have gotten used to the look of him and he does not scare me quite like he did. He is always kind to me, too. He often does not understand what I try to tell him, but he does always try. He makes jokes I do not quite follow, but will not let anyone in the village make fun of me or say a bad word about me. So maybe I should be his wife, after all. 

I have been pondering this for a while now, and perhaps that is why when this morning Berta sent me to the forest to gather firewood I found myself wandering off from the path. I still like the woods, even though the shimmering leafs are all but gone now. Yellow and brown, they lay on the ground, making noise as I shuffle through them. The sensation of being held in something vast and moving is still there, though, and it helps me think.   
It is late in the morning when I come back, arms full of branches and twigs for the fire. I am a little worried Berta will be angry at me for taking my time, but when I come near the house all that worry dissipates. There seems to be some sort of commotion in the courtyard, with plenty of people gathered in a circle. I see one of the little children running in that direction, so I stop her, point and spread my arms, questioning.  
“It’s Rosa!” she girl says excitedly. “Rosa is back!”. She is off on her way before I can learn more. 

I squeeze past the villagers to the front of the crowd. There is a sort of wagon outside Berta’s house, old and battered, and painted green and red. In front of it, in the middle of the human circle, there are two people moving about. They are both dressed in the kind of colors I have not seen for a while: vivid red and orange, clear blue, and shiny yellow. Their faces are half-covered with strange, grimacing masks. One is very fat, a round, protruding belly jumping up and down as the figure pounces in front of the crowd. The other one is smaller and slender, moving on tiptoe behind. It looks at the crowd and places its finger on its lips, then extends a foot. The fat-bellied one walks right into it and falls down, hands waving in exaggerated gestures. The crowd laughs and so do I.  
This goes on for a while: the two figures are clearly telling a story. The smaller one has stolen something from the round one and uses a series of tricks and subterfuges to ridicule the pursuant. I watch, fascinated. Not a word had been said and yet everyone understands perfectly. Each new joke is met with laughter, each successful trick causes applause, each trap makes the crowd hold its breath.   
Finally, the slender figure manages to escape with its bounty and the story is over. The crowd hovers for a while, then disperses slowly. I am still standing right where I was, transfixed. I have completely forgotten the firewood in my arms.

The fat figure has now disappeared into the wagon, but the smaller one is still outside. It removes its mask and hat, revealing what turns out to be a young woman’s face. Waves of black hair spring out from under the hat and fall on her shoulders. She has noticed me now and comes towards me.  
“You must be the girl everyone has been telling me about” she says. “I’m Rosa, Berta’s niece. And that loaf you saw” she point towards the wagon “is my brother Greg. We’ll be spending the winter here”.  
There are so many things I would like to say. I would like to tell her that I am happy she will be staying and that I loved what I just saw. I want to ask her what exactly that was, how it works, how they live like this, if they travel far with their wagon, what the story they told us was and where it came from. But I have to settle for a nod and a smile.  
“Berta tells me you have no voice” she says. “And that you talk in gestures. That must be quite something!”. Then she suddenly looks at me and adds “There, let me take this from you” snatching the firewood from my arms. My hands are free now and she is clearly waiting for me to do something with them, so I give it a try. I point to the wagon, to her, to the space where they did their tricks and jokes, then spread my hands. Rosa looks as confused as most people when I do this, but only for a fraction of a moment. Then she asks “You want me to tell you about what we do?”. I nod, delighted to have been understood.  
“We are comedians” she says, and when that does not seem to make it clearer for me she starts explaining, all the while walking towards the house. She tells me about performing, and about the troupe they travel with, which has chosen to spend the winter in the big city, and about how they travel far and wide with their wagon, amusing the crowds. She tells me that it is a hard, and ungrateful, and sometimes dangerous work, but that she would not change it for anything in the world, and I think I understand why.   
“You have such a wonderful, expressive face” she tells me and somehow that makes me very happy.


	4. Chapter 4

It is mid-winter and a little past the big celebrations when Rosa asks me to tell her where I come from.  
Over the past months we have grown close. We spend much of our time together, doing chores or just talking. Rosa takes the time to let me gesture my way around the thoughts I would like to share with her. She seems rather fascinated by it and never loses patience. She laughs at my silly faces and urges me on whenever I get stuck on a difficult idea. Eventually, we have come up with a series of signs that make things easier for us both. She talks a lot too, and tells all sorts of marvelous stories: about far off lands, buzzing cities, princely courts, and empty wastelands; stories of passion and war, of love and magic, stories of treason and stories of redemption. I do not know how much of it is true and I do not care.   
Everyone loves Rosa’s stories. They often bring visitors to Berta’s house – groups of children whom Berta let’s stay for a tale or two before chasing them out to do some chores, friendly neighbors whom she lets sit for a while in the kitchen as Rosa talks and we all go about our tasks, and sometimes bigger parties, during the increasingly long evenings, for whom she cooks, muttering under her nose but smiling nevertheless. With time, however, I have started noticing something confusing in the way they all look at Rosa, a slight unease in their eyes and their gestures when she is around. I paid it no mind at first, assuming this was akin to the awed reactions the most beautiful of my sisters would get whenever we had company. But from snippets of conversations I heard around the village I gathered Rosa was not considered beautiful. I came to realize this was more like the way one would look at a wild animal should one wander into one’s home – fascinating but ultimately out of place.  
I do not complain, though, since this means whoever comes to listen to her marvelous tales eventually leaves and I enjoy the time the two of us get to spend together.

So when she asks for my story I want to tell her. The problem is I do not know how.   
We are sitting in Berta’s kitchen, peeling potatoes for the evening’s stew. It is warm inside, but the village is all blanketed in snow. I like the world like this, calm and fuzzy, with rounded corners. I like the silence and the way every house becomes a bubble of its own, small and cozy and safe. I find it easier to talk in such a space. And yet, this tale seems too big to fit into any language we share.  
“You don’t want to tell me?” Rosa asks and when I protest she follows up with “You can’t?”. I spread my arms wide and she asks “Too big?”. I nod. “Well, try me anyways!” she says, so I do. But no matter how much I wave my arms around and what faces I make, she still seems confused. I give up after a while and we sit in silence, resigned. Then Rosa brusquely gets up and says “Let’s try something else!”. She grabs a piece of charcoal from the fireplace, then leads me outside and into the barn. Here, she places the coal in my hand and points towards one of the plain wooden walls.   
I hesitate for a moment, but she just stands there expectantly, so I start drawing. What I cannot draw, I complete with gestures. And this is how I tell her everything. About the kingdom under the sea and how curiosity brought me out of it time and again. I tell her how I fell in love with a human who was also a prince. “Oh dear!” Rosa only says at this point in the story and I think I understand. This does seem like a terrible idea now. Then I tell Rosa about the trade I have made, how I have come to live in this body and at what cost.  
By this time, Rosa has found an old fur coat and has covered herself with it, sitting with her legs under her chin on a woodpile, offering as little surface to the cold as possible. But I do not feel the bite of frozen air. I am too engulfed in my memories. I realize only now living alone with them had not been easy.   
When I am done, having told her about the impossible choice and my improbable escape, Rosa looks at me in silence for longer than feels comfortable.   
“All of this happened to you?” she asks at last and I nod, fearful she will not believe me. But all she does is stand up, extend her arms and hug me. We stand there for a while, my face buried in the fur she is wearing and in her dark curls. 

I do not believe Rosa would tell what she learned from me to just anyone. But the tale does get out. Maybe some kids snuck into the barn and saw the pictures. Maybe Rosa said a thing here and there and people pieced together the story. In any case, soon it becomes known and though I do not think the villagers believe it all actually happened to me, the story travels from the village further afield. And that is what brings the man with the little notebook.


	5. Chapter 5

He comes as winter is nearing its end, crossing frozen mud under a pale sky. He is dressed in black, rigid clothes that probably should not have left the city. There is a smile on his face and just a hint of sorrow buried in the corners of his mouth. People say he is a writer and he has come here for me. He has heard rumors of a village where a mute girl can wrestle grown men to the ground and tells the most extraordinary of tales and he has come to look at me with his own eyes.  
Everyone is very excited. Berta has told Greg to kill a pig. Me and Rosa have spent the day making dinner. Ian has been invited too, and a few other people. A fresh tablecloth has been spread and a special set of plates has been dug out of the belly of a cupboard.  
The meal is splendid. I have not eaten this well for months. And all through the meal Berta is chattering, telling and retelling how she has found me and nursed me back to health. I do not think I have ever heard her say so many words at once. But our guest seems less interested in that than he is in me. His intense gaze is on me constantly. He directs all his questions straight to me and gently but firmly silences those who try to answer in my place. Rosa at first translates my signs for him, but he catches on very quickly. After a few questions he puts his hand on hers and says “Thank you, dear” without even turning his eyes away from me. Like Rosa, he nearly instantly takes the habit of saying what he understood out loud for me to confirm. After an initial discomfort, I find his attention flattering and end up enjoying the dinner very much. The little notebook is lying next to his right hand on the table and from time to time he writes down some of the things I tell him. Each time, everyone at the table falls silent while he scribbles. This silence makes me feel good. It makes me feel significant.  
So when the next day he asks whether I could tell him my whole story in detail, I am happy to oblige. I feel excited even, still drunk on the sense of importance.  
In the cold of the morning we walk to the barn. The courtyard is frozen over, the ground uneven and littered with hard lumps of dirt mixed with the remains of snow. He is wearing a coat, dark and long, with gray and brown fur around the collar. He looks like an enormous bird, long wings, massive body, and a frail neck. I have hardly had the time to grab my own coat, as he seemed eager to go and I did not wish to risk discouraging him.  
My drawings in the barn are still there and nobody seems to have touched them since my conversation with Rosa. They are clumsy – dark smudges of charcoal on the uneven wooden planks, and I suddenly feel embarrassed by them. He walks over and examines them closely. I stand by the wall and wonder if this is how Rosa feels before a play. But when he asks me to tell him what the drawings mean all the nervousness fades away. His voice in kind and he is watching me intently as I gesture my way trough the story. He nods, and scribbles, and exclaims at the right moments. I like the way he puts my tale into words: round sentences and ringing syllables.  
I tell him about the human prince whom I watched from afar and his eyes look past me for a moment. “Doomed love” he says, scribbling. “It is, yet it cannot be” he mutters under his breath and I feel it would be impolite to interrupt his thoughts, although I no longer find this part of my story that interesting. Then again, I suppose it is quite unusual and it felt important enough at the time to make me leave home. In all honesty, I now sometimes wonder if there was not more to it, a deep undercurrent of restlessness which I could not quite name, pushing me away, out of my well known life, and towards an elsewhere. But I don’t know how to explain those half-formed thoughts and in any case, the writer seems content with what I have told him.  
“And then?” he asks avidly and I continue. I like the way his eyes light up, the curiosity and eagerness radiating from his slender features. When I describe, the best I can, the short time I lived in the prince’s court, voiceless and out of place, he instantly guesses the meaning of all my gestures and I briefly wonder if he too had sometimes felt a stranger among his fellow humans.  
I get to the night on the ship and I do my best to convey the anguish of the choice I was given, but as I gesture my way through my jump into the sea and my swim through darkness, he suddenly stops writing. As I keep telling him of the night the frown on his face grows until he waves a hand at me impatiently. “No, no, no. This is all wrong” he says. “You don’t just walk away from impossible love”.  
I stare at him, failing to understand. This is the way it happened. But he no longer seems interested in what I have to say. He starts pacing back and forth, muttering to himself.  
“You don’t get away with forbidden love. No. With love like this, it is your soul at stake. Do mermaids even have a soul? Probably not. If they did, they’d know better than to love people who are not for them”.  
I feel surprisingly hurt by this, even though I have yet to understand all the ways humans use the idea of a soul. Some of those ways seem unnecessarily twisted to me. But being just outright denied a soul seems a bit cruel. I wave my hands to try to get his attention, but it is no good. He is entirely lost in thought.  
“A feeling like this, it dooms you” he muses. “No, to be saved, you have to give it away. But what if you cannot? Self-sacrifice! That is the only option! Yes, she self-sacrifices!” visibly happy with himself, he starts scribbling again. “Self-sacrifices and gets a soul!” he writes, frantically now. I try to tap him on the shoulder but he brushes me off. It’s not until he closes his notebook that he notices me again and gives me a wide smile.  
“This is such a beautiful story” he tells me, grabbing my hand and squeezing it. “Thank you”. He is looking me in the eyes now, serious and kind, and I suddenly feel uncertain of what just happened. I just stand there, shaken, trying to figure out what exactly shook me.  
As we walk back to the house, he still seems elated. We meet Berta in the door and he beams at her happily. I try to smile too. After all, it doesn’t matter much what he ended up writing and if he is satisfied with the story, why should I care? Still, there is a knot in my stomach that I cannot seem to get rid of.  
I find Rosa in the kitchen, washing dishes. She looks up at me, puts away the bowl she was holding and dries her hands on a cloth. “What happened?” she asks, taking my hands with a worried look on her face. So apparently my attempts at smiling had not been successful. But I have no idea what to tell her, nor how to even begin telling it. The simple answer, the obvious one, is that nothing much happened. And so no matter how many times she asks, nothing is what I end up telling her.  
As I go about the day, the knot I was feeling unties slowly. By the time the sun sets and we all settle in for the evening, it is nearly gone. Whenever the unease creeps back in, I tell myself I will talk to the writer again and this time get the story right. But there is work to be done, and people around, and before I manage to catch him he goes out for an evening walk, and then it is night-time. I promise myself to talk to him in the morning and I count my breaths to ease myself into sleep, although I keep waking up throughout the night.  
Which is probably why I wake up a little later than usual. I jump to my feet, throw a shawl over my shoulders and go look for the man with the notebook. A run into Rosa in the hallway and ask her about him.  
“The writer?” she says. “He’s going back to the city. He only just left”. I race past her, as she calls after me, and run into the courtyard just in time to see the horse and its rider disappear in the distance on the road to the city. I feel the knot tying itself up again, stretching tentacles all the way to my throat, and this time I know I will not get rid of it easily.


	6. Chapter 6

Time, nevertheless, passes. Ice melts into mud and timid blades of grass slowly start growing. There is more work to be done outside now, cleaning after the winter and getting everything ready for when the warm days begin in earnest.   
The unease I felt after meeting the man with the notebook does not go away, but it becomes somewhat smaller, curled up in a corner of my mind, so that when I don’t think about it I could nearly forget it. Until several things happen that make that feeling crawl out of its hiding place. And as it often is with this kind of things, they all happen on the same day.

The morning smells of spring and wet earth, so when Rosa walks into the kitchen saying “I’m going to the forest. Do you want to come?” I jump on the occasion. We grab a basked and head out.   
We walk under the slowly greening trees and through the brush, the branches still mostly bare, with just the buds of leaves showing. We forage for herbs, gathering nettles, chickweed, and wild garlic. We find a quail’s nest and pick up the tiny spotted eggs. 

I am about to go deeper into the woods when Rosa grabs my hand saying “I want to show you something”. She leads me on a path I have taken several times on my walks, but never really explored. In that direction the forest quickly gives way to fields which remained barren and empty throughout the winter and I always found the landscape too desolate to dwell there for long. But now the earth is waking, covered in fresh, intensely green shoots. I follow Rosa along a boundary between two fields. We walk for a long while before crossing into a meadow, then we walk some more through dried high grass. The land slopes down slightly and in the distance I see a flash of blue. I stop abruptly. Rosa walks a couple of steps before noticing I did not follow and turning back.  
“It’s not the sea” she says, half reassuring, half apologizing. “It’s nothing that impressive”.  
She takes my hand again and we walk down towards that shimmering spot. As we get closer I realize it must be a creek, hidden away in a small depression among the meadows. It is indeed not very big, but I still cannot take my eyes off it. I have not seen this much water since the night I left the sea behind me. 

I approach it slowly. There are reeds, mixed with bright yellow flowers, growing all around it and I push them aside to get through. The water is clear and does not seem very deep. Without thinking, I take off my shoes and step in. Rosa pushes through the reeds as well and gives a small laugh seeing me with feet in the water. I give her an inquiring look and she says “It’s just that you look so happy”. I did not realize it until she said so, but I am. The sun is warm on my skin, the water is glimmering, there are frogs singing somewhere in the grass, and Rosa is laughing, and for a moment I feel perfectly content and carefree. 

I start walking deeper into the creek, but Rosa stops me.  
“You’re not going to swim in that?” she asks. “It’ freezing”.   
It is true that this human body seems more sensitive to cold, but I still grew up in water colder than this. I give Rosa a look trying to convey that she needs not worry. She shakes her head but says “All right, all right, go on then. But at least do something about your clothes, or Berta will have my head”.   
That is when I notice the hem of my dress has already been drenched and I try to get it out of the water, getting my sleeves wet as well in the process. “Here, let me help” Rosa says and after a moment of awkward struggling with the folds of increasingly damp cloth I find myself wearing just my slip dress. Rosa freezes for a moment, staring at me with my dress in her hands. The sudden tension between us takes me by surprise. I wonder if this is one of those times when I broke one of the rules of dry land by accident. Even more surprisingly, as I stare back at her, I realize I cannot breathe. We stand there like this for a heartbeat, before some instinct within me kicks in and decides the appropriate reaction to loosing me breath is plunging head first into water.

When I surface, not far from the center of the creek, Rosa looks worried, but she immediately lightens up upon seeing me and she is back to her usual smiling self. She laughs as I swim about and splashes water in my direction whenever I get close enough. Then she sits cross-legged on the bank and waits patiently for me to get tired of the swimming. 

Our dresses dry out in the sun as we walk back home. It’s later afternoon by the time we get to the village and I feel exhausted but strangely joyful. I would have been very happy with this day had it ended there. Unfortunately, it does not.


	7. Chapter 7

When we get back there seems to be a commotion in Berta’s kitchen. At first, I worry it is because we were gone for so long, but soon enough Ian steps out from the small crowd that formed around him with a bunch of paper in his hand and things turn out to be much worse.  
“Well, Little Arms” he says waving the paper in my face “you’re famous!”   
I give him a questioning look. There is suddenly a pit in my stomach.   
“What is that?” Rosa asks, taking the paper from his hand.   
It turns out to be a letter that the blacksmith has gotten from his brother in the city.   
“He says there is a whole page about our Little Arms there!” Ian says, clearly as delighted as I am apprehensive. “Come on, Rosa, can you read it?”.  
“Calm down and I will” Rosa says, giving him a little tap with the letter to get him out of the way and moving to the center of the gathering. “Dear brother, and so on, and so on...” she impatiently skips paragraphs, until she finds what she is looking for. “Oh, here: You will be curious to learn that a book has been published and the whole city can’t get enough of it, and especially of the most strange of tales, that you might know something about. I speaks of a soul-less creature, a mermaid who gave her voice away to be with the man she loved...”. 

I can hear Rosa’s voice, clearly doubtful at times, and I can see everyone gathered around her holding their breath, listening, exclaiming from time to time, smiling with pride when they glance at me, their very own famous monster. I can see them and hear them, but there is a fog before my eyes and a ringing in my ears. It is all there, the truth mixed up with the lies, my own life laid bare, and twisted to fit an other’s needs. It’s all there, written down, and known, set in letters on paper, set in print, and in people’s minds, forever. 

Ian comes up to me, puts an arm around me and squeeze me a little, beaming.   
Rosa finishes reading and searches the crowd with her eyes, until she finds me. She gives me a questioning look and I feel grateful, but too stunned to respond. I just give her a little nod and try to smile, as everyone rejoices in my fame. 

This last for a while. Food is served. Beer is passed around. There is talking, and speculating, and plenty of questions, which I just answer with nods and shrugs. Finally, everyone is gone, save Ian, who lags behind.   
“I should take this to the blacksmith” he says, taking the letter from Rosa. “Unless you want to keep it a while?” he adds. “I could come by tomorrow?”.  
I shake my head and he finally leaves with the letter. 

Rosa and I are left alone, as Berta has gone to sleep having instructed us to clean up.   
I feel empty. There is nothing left of the joy of the past day. I can’t even describe the loss I’m feeling, I just know I have lost something and I’m too tired to even try to do anything about it.  
Rosa starts picking up plates from the table. “Well, that was quite the evening” she says. I force a smile in response and move to help her. She pauses for a moment then adds, teasing “Ian is going ask you to marry him, eventually, you know”.  
I do know that. Berta has explained it to me in detail several times. I nod.   
“Wait,” Rosa says, her voice equal parts laughter and disbelief “you’re not thinking of actually saying yes, are you?”.  
I’m not quite sure how to respond to that. Berta has been very clear about this too. Apparently it is just a thing humans do. It has something to do with the bleeding, apparently, and the making of children, and not being able to carry heavy things (which I am, but that, Berta said, is beside the point), and not being able to make a living. You are supposed to marry someone, apparently. Everyone does it. Well, not Rosa, I couldn’t help noticing, but to that Berta only waved a hand vaguely. Since it seems I am going to be living in this world, I might have to go along with it, I figure. And Ian is really not bad, as people to marry go. I haven’t made any decisions, though, and I’m not about to start now, with a pit in my stomach and a void in my head. 

I shrug and keep on cleaning plates. My mind is elsewhere, which is probably why I don’t immediately notice that Rosa has frozen mid-gesture behind me. I turn to face her and she quickly goes back to wiping the table.  
“Well, you might just as well” she says, eyes fixed on the surface in front of her. “Though I’ll probably miss the wedding. We’ll be going on the road again soon”.   
That, in turn, makes me stop abruptly. I knew she was going to leave eventually, but she never seemed to be planning to go this soon. And a part of me kept hoping that maybe, just this year, she would stay.   
I am too stunned by the entirety of this evening to think of a reaction to that, and so we finish tidying up in silence and part for the night.

Once alone, I find it impossible to sleep. There is an immense sadness curled around my throat and swarming in my chest. I haven’t felt this alone since that night on the sea, all those months ago. I think them over, those months spent on dry land and I realize they feel meaningless, as though the story written in the writer’s little notebook had wiped away everything I’ve been through. As though Rosa leaving made it all pointless.   
I stare into the darkness of my room and an idea forms in my head. I could still try to fix this. The writer, after all, was so nice and reasonable. If I could only explain, I’m sure he would do something about that awful book. All I have to do is find him.   
I get up and get dressed before I know what I’m doing. This seems like madness, but if I wait till morning, they’ll try to talk me out of it. I have to go now if I am to go at all.   
I pick some bread from the kitchen, and put it in a bag with a change of clothes. In the courtyard, I pick up some flowers and arrange them on the kitchen table. I hope Berta will understand. As for Rosa, she is leaving herself, isn’t she?   
I take a last look around the kitchen, then step outside and silently close the door. It’s still night, but a vary faint glow can be seen in the East. I tiptoe quickly between the houses, until the road stretches out in front of me. The weight in my chest gets a little lighter as I start walking away from the village and towards the city.


End file.
